The results are:
Liberals: 59 seats, 39% of the vote
Progressive Conservatives: 27 seats, 31%
New Democratic Party: 21 seats, 24%
Green Party: 0 seats, 5%.
The results are going to be poured over with a fine-tooth comb in the next few weeks but it's clear that the Tea-Party agenda of the Progressive Conservatives did not work. (He hired American Republican strategists to help with his campaign.) They should have won the election handily after 11 years of Liberal government plagued by scandal but, instead, they lost 10 seats and their leader Tim Hudak resigned last night when the results became clear.
Didn't Ontarians reelect a party that wasted a billion dollars on the gas-fired power plants fiasco? Wasn't this scandal one of the worst corruption scandals in the history of Canada? I heard that mafia was very pleased first with the plan do build the plants and then with demolition. They collected the most of the tax payers money.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't find any information on gas powered power plants in Ontario but in your Southern neighbor, power companies are taking advantage of cheap natural gas to replace coal burning power plants. The percentage of electricity produced in the US by coal has been dropping for several years with that produced by natural gas concomitantly increasing.
DeleteThe previous Liberal Party leader cancelled two new gas-fired power plants during the last election. It ended up costing hundreds of millions of dollars in cancellation fees and other penalties.
DeleteThe other two parties were promising to cancel the plants if they got elected. It was a scandal but it wasn't corrupt.
Trust me, there are many worse scandals in Canadian politics. Some of them really were examples of corruption.
Given that the Liberals had been in power for 11 years and there were several scandals like the gas-fired power plants, they should never have won the election. The fact that they did is directly attributable to the stupidity of the Progressive Conservative Party who blew their chances by taking an anti-labor, hard-core conservative position. They promised to fire 100,000 civil servants and give tax cuts to businesses.
The anti-government agenda doesn't work very well in Canada.
Strikes me that bringing in American consultants -- no matter how good they are and whether they could hit Canadian's hot buttons -- is bound to take a few percentage points off, since one of the major hot buttons among Canadians is that they are not Americans and don't want to be controlled by Americans. Dumb dumb dumb tactical error, easily foreseen.
DeleteRe Larry Moran
DeleteWhy were the gas powered plants canceled?
Why were the gas powered plants canceled?
DeleteNIMBY.
It's a completely manufactured "scandal". The other two parties stated they would cancel the plants, as well, and there is no reason it would have been less costly if they had.
It is really telling that the public would rather have a government with a history of incompetence and scandal than one led by Hudek.
ReplyDeleteI had great difficulty deciding who to vote for. It was easy for me to disqualify the Big Three. I even looked at the policy platforms of all eleven options on my ballot, but most of the fringe parties are fringe for a reason.
ReplyDeleteIn the end I voted Green. I have major issues with their anti-nuclear policy and the way they court the alternative medicine/anti-scientific constituency, but in the end I felt they were the least bad, and closest to what I was looking for.
Going forward I'm probably somewhere between the Liberal and Conservative parties and would gladly vote for either if they can remain scandal free and don't go too too far left wing (Liberals) or can nominate a normal person as party leader and take reasonable stances on the environment and scientific research (Conservatives).
So 6 out of 10 people who voted are effectively disenfranchised.
ReplyDeleteAbout the closest we come to proportional representation in Canada (federally and provincially) is when we elect minority governments. Then and only then do all the parties get to formulate policy.
Way to go Andrea Horwath (leader of the NDP party who triggered the election by defeating a budget bill that her party had significant input into) on pissing away your opportunity to actually represent the people who voted you in.
Now you and the people you represent have zero input into policy formation.
I'm a strong supporter of proportional representation. Unfortunately, the people of Ontario don't agree. In the 2007 referendum 63% of the voters rejected it.
DeleteLaurence Moran: I'm a strong supporter of proportional representation.
DeleteFirst-past-the-post (FPTP) model is fatally flawed. Proportional representation is no better!!!. A made-in-Ireland/New Zealand/Australia solution to this dilemma is probably the best.
No political party in Canada would ever dream of using the “FPTP” system in their leadership races. Multiple ballots are required so that any winner must represent at least 50% of voters; even if the winner does not represent everybody’s first choice! This is how Brian Mulroney beat FPTP Joe Clark in 1983.
Similarly, elections are only fair if run-off elections or their equivalent are allowed. All winners must represent a majority of their constituency; even if they do not represent everybody’s first choice!
The SUPPLEMENTARY VOTE (SV) or the CONTINGENT VOTE (CV) is an alternative to proportional representation. Both clearly generate identical outcomes to run-off elections correctly endorsed by all parties during their leadership conventions.
As in Ireland or Malta, Canadian voters would merely indicate their order of choice candidate by writing ‘1’ next to their first choice and so on to indicate their second and third choices. Modern computer technology does the rest. Votes are never wasted and tactical voting can be eliminated.
Proportional representation could give the Green Party up to 30 seats in a hung parliament. A host of other fringe parties would effectively hamstring parliament. CV or SV would have given the Federal Green party a handful of seats (1-5 perhaps) with a majority government most likely (or at least a manageable coalition). Fringe parties would not make it in. No system is perfect - but CV or SV appears to be the best democratic solution to an untenable status quo...
Ancillary benefits to such reform would include a return to debating "values" in typical Canadian fashion as opposed to fixating on "personalities" in quintessential American fashion; fixed election dates; and a reduced likelihood of “hung” parliaments. Meanwhile Canadians most opposed to electoral reform (i.e the “united right”) remain those stalwart political partisans promoting FPTP to assure unfair one-party control of Parliament; i.e. "their party"! This happened just recently in B.C. where gullible referendum voters were confused with the specious suggestion that some voters would end up getting more votes than others under an SV/CV system.
I for one would prefer a coalition government modeled on Swiss precedent - a coalition that would also include the Conservatives in Cabinet together with Liberals and NDP not unlike a parliamentary committee. (The Yukon currently employs a version of this model very successfully) IMO – the Swiss probably have the best electoral system going with frequent consultation with the public by referendum.
Sadly, the Swiss/Yukon model may be a "bridge-too-far"... first things first... CV or SV.
"she becomes the first woman to be elected Premier of Ontario"
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for Wynne to be the premier to get rid of publicly funded Catholic schools in Ontario. The cost of cancelling two new gas-fired power plants is nothing compared to the billion spent funding Catholic schools.
Green party platform includes merging public, Catholic school boards in Ontario
DeleteBut I'd say the Wynne has more reason than most to loath the homophobic and misogynistic ideology of the Catholic church, so who knows.
One might think that, but in April, Wynne was present, and blessed by a cardinal at the first Catholic mass celebrated at the Ontario legislature, in recognition of JPII day http://www.catholicregister.org/item/17873-collins-reminds-mpps-of-catholic-schools-gift-to-ontario
DeleteI remember teaching in Edmonton Alberta, where one large city block accommodated a very large field with two different schools; one Catholic and the other public. “What an unfair and wasteful duplication of cost and effort” - or, so I at first thought!
DeleteWith site based management where funding followed the student together with publication of school results - the resulting competition between neighborhood schools became very intense! Catholic schools almost always managed to outperform their public counterparts. As a result, public schools modified their delivery of curriculum to match the performance of Catholic schools.
This competition results in a co-evolution benefiting both systems. It is no small coincidence that Albertan academic results always outrank any other province in Canada! Ontario is a close second… and by no coincidence Ontario too permits a fierce competition between two separate school boards, one Catholic and one secular.
The bottom line: Separate Catholic Education benefits everybody!
Final note to Larry Moran who I am certain will take umbrage at my endorsement of a separate Catholic School system. I have taught in both Catholic and Public schools and I was provided much more latitude to expound the cogency of evolution than permitted me in any public system. Professional obligation obliges me (even today) to be sensitive and respectful of other faith-based belief systems even when blatantly ridiculous and anti-scientific.
Catholic teachers have no problem in this department. The correct answer in the Biology classroom is always "evolution". If parents don’t like that emphasis, they can pull their kids and send them to public schools instead.
I remember one parent who was attempting to save money by sending his son to a publically funded Catholic school instead of forking out tuition for a private parochial school. He really took me to task for emphasizing the cogency of Evolutionary Theory. I had to explain that modern evolutionary theory was part and parcel of Catholic teaching and that some of the greatest contributors to evolutionary were Catholics and even Catholic priests.
I had to chuckle at his outrage. I then explained that he was obviously suffering from a misunderstanding: He clearly thought our school was “Christian”… that in fact was untrue we were as a matter of fact instead “Catholic” and therein lay a great difference.
My principal dragged into the office. the next day, and gave me a lot of grief over that random act of mischief! ;-)
Tom Mueller,
DeleteWhile I'm sure most of us appreciate your efforts to teach science accurately and oppose creationism, your defense of the Catholic school system is misguided.
If you are correct that having two competing school systems increases the quality of education, then this could accomplished simply by having two separate secular systems.
You repeat the common fallacy that religious schools outperform secular schools. What is really happening is that schools in which a selection process occurs outperform schools that take all comers. I am not suggesting that Catholic schools deliberately weed out poor (in both senses of the word) students. Rather, students who attend the Catholic system do so as a result of a deliberate decision of parents to move their kids out of the regular public system. This imposes a selection process on the quality of students admitted, even if this is inadvertent.
The simple fact is that having a publicly funded school system that actively supports and proselytizes on the behalf of a particular religious denomination is discriminatory and should be unacceptable in a society that endorses the equality of all religious faiths (including no faith). If the gov't supported an atheist school system to required students to renounce the belief in God, the Catholic Church would be the first to squeal about this being a misuse of public funds.
It's especially revolting that my tax dollars promote the teaching to children that contraception is a "sin" and homosexuality is "disordered". Let's not forget how hard the Catholic school board fought to oppose the Liberal gov't's anti-bullying legislation because it explicitly protected gay students.
So Tom Mueller, you are comfortable with children being taught by an international criminal organization that aids and abets paedophiles and preaches an anti-human, hate based ideology that demonizes homosexuals and women and is directly responsible for an organized program of genocide in sub-Saharan Africa via their completely insane opposition to the use of sexual prophylaxis and birth control ?
DeletePerhaps you could spin us a long, drawn out and rambling anecdote on how despite all this what we are actually seeing is co-evolution. Maybe you could work in the some side stories that incorporate the recent shenanigans of the Catholic church in Ireland and the starved and abused children under their control being buried in a septic tank. Or you could work in the recent testimony of Archbishop Robert Carlson who apparently did not know that it was illegal for priests to have sex with children.
What a chuckle we all could have over this.
Be sure to work in a smiley to two.
@lutesuite
DeleteRe: While I'm sure most of us appreciate your efforts to teach science accurately and oppose creationism, your defense of the Catholic school system is misguided.
Thank you!!! … and if I may return the compliment – I remain in your debt for helping me improve the quality of my education. I humbly suggest that your opinions regarding Catholic Education are sorely outdated and terribly misinformed.
If you are correct that having two competing school systems increases the quality of education, …
I am - the correlation is so uncanny that causation becomes obvious!
Re: then this could accomplished simply by having two separate secular systems.
I AGREE most heartedly. Quebec offers an interesting alternative model that merits scrutiny. Time will tell how that experiment plays out.
Please allow me to be frank. Embarking upon a teaching career, I did my internship (i.e. student teaching) in Catholic schools where I most vociferously decried the duplication and waste of two systems, one of them being religious. I was outraged and expressed myself in secular terms no differently than you/Larry.
As the Germans are wont to phrase: “Feindeslob klingt!”
Yes, a separate Catholic education remains an anachronism of constitutional law from the 19th Century. It is the best we have got and political reality dictates that bureaucrats will allow no other alternative in future – so let’s work with what we got.
Re …students who attend the Catholic system do so as a result of a deliberate decision of parents to move their kids out of the regular public system. This imposes a selection process on the quality of students admitted, even if this is inadvertent.
You are almost correct. The focus of Catholic education is ironically more “humanistic” (according to the principles of John Dewey) than secular schools. Catholic teachers teach the “whole child” as opposed to just “curriculum”. Therein lays a great difference! Please take my word for it – the difference shows!
If you suggest that parents who really care about how their children are educated constitute a “selection pressure” then I will have to concur. I just do not see anything wrong with that.
@ lutesuite con't
DeleteRe: The simple fact is that having a publicly funded school system that actively supports and proselytizes on the behalf of a particular religious denomination is discriminatory and should be unacceptable in a society that endorses the equality of all religious faiths (including no faith).
Catholic schools (like all public schools) are decidedly multi-ethnic. This explains the presence of the many Hindus, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists (among others) whose parents value the benefits that an alternative Catholic education can provide. I asked my Buddhist dentist from Hong Kong why he sent his kids to my Catholic school. He said he wanted his kids to have the same quality of education that Catholics (such as the Jesuits) are renowned for. Proselytization is a non-issue. Most of my kids were decidedly secular and only nominally Catholic. I had to teach religious education to a group of inner-city hooligans who were not at all interested or inclined to be so educated.
The very first day I wrote on the board - "Drugs, Sex and Rock & Roll! Why not? We are all going to die!?”
The kids came up with some boiler plate answers – something to do with eternal rewards.
I then wrote my second challenge on the board – “If bad things can happen to good people – why be good?”
They again continued in similar fashion…
I then challenged them with Jean-Paul Sartre’s critique – “Christians are all moral cowards? - the only reason we are good is because G-d is a celestial bully offering us a celestial bribe!”
We ended up spending a long time on the Book of Job ( great work of Literature!) … and I spent much of the year teaching these young Catholics Chassidus.
We also studied Liberation Theology and watched/ discussed movies on the Archbishop Romero and the Catholic anti-Nazi resistance group called the White Rose… etc.
A good time was had by all!
I did get into trouble… from the local Lubavicher rabbi who chastised me soundly. According to him, one crucifixion and two millennia of anti-Semitic persecution later, the Jewish world is still smarting from the last time Jewish esoterica was shared with the Gentile world in such fashion.
I also got into trouble with a weak administrator (an idiot actually) who hauled me into his office because I was making Grade 8 Religion (this was a Catholic Junior High School) too enjoyable and too engaging (his own words!!!!!). He suggested that my making it real by organizing field trips to volunteer at food banks, visiting hospitals and old folks' homes to visit patients, writing letters of support to prisoners of conscience sponsored by Amnesty International were outside the purvey of the curriculum. (he failed to see the irony how each activity was inspired from the Gospels). FTR – I am not unique. I like to think that all good Catholic educators all do what I did – convert students into THINKERS and SOCIAL ACTIVISTS!
Bottom Line – many students entered my classroom as atheists and exited as atheists. I also had Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims who never indicated they felt any pressure to convert. I like to think that all my students left as better people because they were obliged to think along lines that public education does not afford. As Socrates opined: “the un-reflected life is not worth living”
@ lutesuite con' t some more
DeleteRe It's especially revolting that my tax dollars promote the teaching to children that contraception is a "sin" and homosexuality is "disordered".
The Church’s stand on both contraception and homosexuality is “evolving”. I won’t go into details. I can speak for what is said in the schools wherein I taught. We never taught that “homosexuality” is “disordered” because such teaching is CONTRARY to current teaching of the church. OK – the church at one time held such views, but no longer. OK – there are some misinformed Catholics who still believe that, but I personally have never met any in the school system. Bottom Line – sexual orientation and sexual identity is not a choice and any form of “LOVE” cannot be “disordered” according to current Catholic teaching. That does not mean civil unions are identical to marriage – but at this point we quibble. I am convinced that the Vatican’s dogma (under the new pope) is converging on the enlightened views of the “Old Catholics” (of the Union of Utrecht). Anticipating your rebuttal, I will pre-emptively agree with you that sometimes the church moves too slowly on important issues. But the fact remains that the majority of Catholics do their own thing and ignore the Vatican.
I remind you that Catholic “dissent” is indeed possible. For example, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops 1968 “Winnipeg Statement” contradicted the traditional Catholic teaching on contraception despite its status as infallible “ordinary magisterium”.
Cutting to the chase, there exist so many exceptions and loopholes wrt Humanae Vitae that frankly contraception is a non-issue. Law requires that Catholic Schools funded by taxpayers adhere to certain curricular standards. Catholic teachers in fact teach sex education little differently (if at all) than their public counter-parts. Each class may end with the obligatory nudge-nudge-wink-wink tip of the ecclesiastical hat to Catholic dogma. (Remember that almost every Catholic teacher has or is continuing to employ contraception themselves). But the bottom line remains that students taught in a Catholic School are just as informed and educated according to curricular outcomes of “SEX Education” as their public school equivalents.
Re” Let's not forget how hard the Catholic school board fought to oppose the Liberal gov't's anti-bullying legislation because it explicitly protected gay students.
I am unaware of this and would appreciate any links. I will concede that Catholics are no different than any group I am aware of - their ranks include a great many idiots. I can assure you that any such position by individuals on a “Catholic” school board are misinformed and are speaking in contradiction to church teaching! For example, there still exist the occasional misinformed Catholic who erroneously believes that the original sin/Adam/Eve story is intended to be literally true.
Bottom Line: It is no coincidence that provinces supporting Catholic separate education also outperform provinces that do not. Everybody benefits with the resulting competition. Ontario tampers with the constitutionally defined mandate of education at its peril.
Tom,
DeleteYour anecdotes just confirm my impression that Catholic School teachers are much more enlightened than their overlords in the Church. That was borne out in the recent controversy over Ontario anti-bullying legislation, where the Church and some school boards sought to ban the implementation of Gay-Straight Alliance groups in Catholic school. The teachers, OTOH, accepted these groups:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/catholic-school-trustees-fear-fallout-over-gay-straight-alliance-furor/article4230933/#dashboard/follows/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/catholic-teachers-support-ontarios-gay-straight-alliance-initiative/article4234347/#dashboard/follows/
So it seems to me that argues against your point: Make all those wonderful teachers in the Catholic system available to all students, and don't make them beholden the the authority of an antiquated bigoted institution.
@ lutesuite
DeleteRe So it seems to me that argues against your point: Make all those wonderful teachers in the Catholic system available to all students, and don't make them beholden the authority of an antiquated bigoted institution…
Again, I thank you for the compliment. However, it would appear you missed my point(s).
1 – Excellence in Education is assured when competition is ensured. You may dislike the fact that one of the competitors is labeled “Catholic” – but that is the reality of the situation and I see no politically acceptable way of changing that without giving everybody their own school board. That would balkanize our education system – so let’s work with what we have got.
2- I still maintain that your perceptions regarding Catholic “Faith” are sorely outdated and terribly misinformed. As an outsider, you are probably unaware of what “church” actually means. The noun “Church” is supposed to mean community of believers and the hierarchy of the church is supposed to represent the community and serve the community, and not the other way around. I will not bore you with the details of how the “leadership” of the church was elected by the laity such that bishops (including the first popes) saw themselves as servants and not as “princes” some 1 500 – 2 000 years ago.
It would appear that the current Pope is returning the church to its original paradigm.
I predict that in short order; you and others (especially any Pete Seeger fans present) will at some point be urging government to sustain the separate Catholic school system as a bulwark against reactionary forces that would otherwise highjack public education (cf Texas) and as a bastion of social activism.
The articles you cite clearly indicate two important points:
Delete1 - There is a huge disconnect between elected school board members and the community.
2 - There is also huge disconnect between elected school board members and the church hierarchy. In other words, school board members are more Catholic than the Pope.
There was a time when school board members were unpaid volunteers that hired and fired teachers and principals as they saw fit. Then came the Hall-Dennis report that instituted an Educational Curia that would make the Vatican blush!
Superintendents together with deputy superintendents all with their coterie of apparatchik functionaries on sky-high salaries consumed so much of the school board budget that less and less trickled down to the classroom. Classrooms grew and grew in size and neighborhood schools needed to be shut.
School boards were no longer occupied by interested parents but rather political wanna-be’s with no interest in education as opposed to the $25k stipend; that and the opportunity to get their names in the newspapers to further nascent political careers.
I suggest that Ontario return to the way things wre before the Hall-Dennis report
I predict that in short order; you and others (especially any Pete Seeger fans present) will at some point be urging government to sustain the separate Catholic school system as a bulwark against reactionary forces that would otherwise highjack public education (cf Texas) and as a bastion of social activism.
DeleteSeriously? What planet are you living on? A quote from one of those articles I linked:
The Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association – anticipating what it called “objectionable” new provincial anti-bullying legislation that is expected to pass Tuesday, requiring schools to allow GSAs – outlined a strategy in a memo to its members. This includes making GSAs a “subset” of broader anti-bullying clubs and ensuring that they adhere to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, which asserts that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered.”
Such bigots have no business having any say whatsoever over public education.
Hey Tom,
DeleteIs there no crime committed by the catholic church that is too disgusting for you to try to rationalize away ?
Why is it that 2 schools boards are OK but more are 'balkanization' ?
What if we swapped the Catholic school board for say a Muslim or Hindu school board. That should be OK given that there would still be 2 of them. Right ?
Have you ever considered the cost in human misery when you choose to indulge your fetish for a moral system based on goat herder snuff porn ? Perhaps you have considered it but just don't give a shit.
Given that you provide moral (and I suspect financial) support to the catholic church, do you consider yourself complicit in the crimes against humanity that it commits ?
Do you take pause to consider the human cost every time a priest sticks his dick into a child ? Or do you just worry about political wanna-be’s with no interest in education trying to get their names in the newspapers to further nascent political careers ?
Do you think that your choice to adopt an irrational and non-evidence based ideology based on some morbid fear of the dark and death trumps the right of citizens of a secular democracy to interact with the state without religious interference ?
Do you think that the current pope is as big of a douche nozzle as the previous one ? Say what you will about Benedict, but that man had good taste in shoes.
Thank you Steve Oberski
DeleteYour responses to Tom Mueller are excellent.
The fact that they did is directly attributable to the stupidity of the Progressive Conservative Party who blew their chances by taking an anti-labor, hard-core conservative position.
ReplyDeleteAny Canadian party that imagines emulating American republicans/conservatives is a wonderful thing is too dangerous and too potentially destructive (not to mention too stupid) to be granted power. I haven't lived in Ontario for about 8 yrs but was happy with the result of that election.
High point of the campaign: Tim Hudak TV commercial criticizing politicians who just say what the public wants to hear. You mean like the million jobs you've got in your back pocket? Pull the other one, Tim-bit. Wynne won largely because no one believed you. Sort of like how the Hudak's predecessor shot himself in the foot by promising to extend funding to more religious schools.
ReplyDeleteThe Libs really have to stop winning elections just because the Tories say something stupid.
I wasn't much impressed with any of our choices this time round. Even when McGuinty did something I agreed with (like the MicroFIT program), he managed to screw it up. The local PC incumbent, Jack McLaren, is a right-wing nutjob who'd fit right in with the Tea Party. The Liberal candidate was a lightweight, so I voted NDP because he sounded like a good guy. Of course, the Tea Partier won.
I really, really wish they'd redistrict our suburb in with Ottawa instead of the rural areas to the west.
The problem that our parties have is that they elect leaders based on their own very small electoral group. We saw the Federal Liberals make that mistake with both Dion and Ignatieff. The Ontario PC obviously made that mistake with Hudak. I also thought that the Ontario Liberals made the same mistake with choosing Wynne, a party insider. I am glad I was wrong. Now, if Wynne can find a way to cure the party of its incompetence at managing anything, she might have many more years to govern. Of course, it will be very interesting to see who the Ontario PC's choose as a new leader, another far right leaning leader or a more centrist leader. And one other thing, when will Horwath resign? Is it better for her to get out of the way soon in order to let the next leader groom themselves in the job, or should she hang on for 2-3 years to give the party lots of time to find a potential contender?
DeleteOne thing that rarely get mentioned regarding the scandals that have plagued the Liberal gov't in recent years, such as e-Health, the Orng air ambulance, and the gas plants: These were all examples of so-called "Public-Private Partnerships" (P3), in which control of public services are handed over, in part or in whole, to private companies. The assumption is that the private sector will be more cost-efficient and accountable in managing these endeavours. The experience with these three fiascos suggest this assumption is false, and perhaps it would be better if public services were returned to the full control of the government.
DeleteThe results are going to be poured (sic) over with a fine-tooth comb in the next few weeks but it's clear that the Tea-Party agenda of the Progressive Conservatives did not work.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that Hudak tried to emulate many of the policies of the American Right, and in particular, the Tea Party. However, it should be emphasized that he did not make even the slightest reference to their religiously based social policies, such as on abortion, gay marriage, prayer in school, etc. Even the most conservative Canadian politicians know these will not fly here (and, for the most part, they don't embrace them themselves).
About a year before the election, Hudak did try adopting a version of the union-busting legislation implemented by Scott Walker in Wisconsin. But he was forced to drop this when it became evident that this would lose the election for him.
Hi Larry,
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this is the right place to say this, but your thoughts on this new study on human-chimp divergence will be highly appreciated:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/humans-chimps-dna-genes-split_n_5491438.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6189/1272.abstract
Tom Mueller says
ReplyDelete"The Church’s stand on both contraception and homosexuality is 'evolving'."
Please see http://www.couragerc.net/index.html and check out the Courage Chapters in Canada http://www.couragerc.net/Chapter_Listings.html
Please stop praising Jorge Mario Bergoglio. For him, all the world's a stage and being pope is just another role.
Well I hardly paid attention and didn't vote for other reasons in my riding. And I come here for origin stuff.
ReplyDelete40% means 60 % said no thanks.
Since its truly irrelevant these days about these political parties since they all agree with each other then I do think the issue of her being a woman and gay is important.
Possibly to most it wasn't. I don't know.
Woman. I agree with the modern social contract of letting either sex strive for amy ambition except the army or police.
The bible teaches the woman only exists to help her husband. otherwise she would be another man. So her purpose is , originally, to further her husbands ambition in a pre fall world of coarse.
Therefore it is wrong for woman to strive to be accomplished etc if they are married. they should all be married. therefore its morally wrong for women to do as men do.
Yet this is a view long gone and so we have a social contract. We never owed women our society. They were immigrants to our society of accomplishment and being the boss.
I know these they push women ahead unfairly. I don't know in this case. But I find the political parties for sure want to equalize/bring up women to mens level. They do not believe in mere citizenship or individuality. THEY DO mean sex identity matters in the final count to reflect no inferiority etc. SO they trespass always in spirit and deed.
I find myself also women never compete with men unless its controlled.
HMMMM. A educated suspicion is this women was promoted over better men.
there simply should be no interference but this would not bring equalness.
Too bad.
Lesbian.
Again its a social contract not to interfere with someones ambition because they are gay.
However if she ran to use it to promote it as a moral right or a moral neutral then one should voted against her for that.
I(n a earlier Canada I would not agree its okay because only Christian morality on the family can allow such to be leaders.
i still think this way but there is the contract I agree with.
Hmmm. its just not important these days about leadership sex life. fornicators or adulters shouldn't make one vote against someone for that reason.
its sad and very unontario to see a lesbian. our poor ancestors would be displeased and rightly so.
Because they push the gay agenda and feminism i think this is a sad , unappealing, just not right new premiership. However lots of problems here.
There just isn't a excellent conservative or populist movement in ontario to make a better ontario for all.
its boring, strange, and playing to some left wing hollywood movie.
oh well that Dalton guy wasn't any better. Its Ontario. They are always short of being stars.
Therefore it is wrong for woman to strive to be accomplished etc if they are married. they should all be married. therefore its morally wrong for women to do as men do.
DeleteKathleen Wynne is married.
Kathleen Wynne is married to another woman. This would give booby Byers heartburn.
DeleteJust think: If Kathleen Wynne or Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel or Jane Goodall or any other such powerful, accomplished woman was married to Mr. Byers it would be her duty to take a subservient role and only strive to support him in his ambition to spew his ignorant and incoherent diatribes all over the internet. What an efficient use of human resources and potential that would be!
DeleteDon't you know that religious wackaloons are OK with girl on girl hanky-panky.
DeleteCome on Robert, 'fess up, thinking about that makes you hot all over, doesn't it ? I bet you know all the best web sites.
It's only the guy on guy sex that icks them out. Right Robert ?
Does it? Because they certainly spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about it. In graphic terms. They do SAY it icks them out.
DeleteI hate to break it to you, but the Liberals didn't win the provincial election. No Ontario provincial party has won an election whose party was also governing federally for as long as I can remember. IOW, the Liberals in Ontario won because the Tories rule in Ottawa. No talking head analyzing the results got this, but that is not saying much. Wynne was guaranteed a minority. There is a sizable swing vote in Ontario that abhors the idea of giving one party too much power. The reason she got a majority is because the dimwit Hudak thought Ontarians were in favour of axing 100k jobs. We are a compassionate people, we don't take pleasure in causing others suffering.
ReplyDeleteMcGuinty won in 2003, when Jean Chretien was PM. And in the 2007 federal election, even though Harper won, the Liberals still did better than the Conservatives in Ontario.
DeleteIt sure looks to me like the Liberals won this election. Party with most seats wins. Isn't that how it works?
Re lutesuite
DeleteAs I understand how parliamentary systems like Canada and the UK work, the party with the most seats is first approached to form a government. If they have less then a majority, they either have to govern with less then a majority or they have to form a coalition government with one of the other parties, as the Conservative Party in the UK, and the Christian Democrats in Germany have done. If they can't make a deal, the party that finished second could attempt to form a coalition government with one of the otherr parties, although this doesn't happen very often.
Thanks, colnago80, but I already knew that.
DeleteHopefully my snark did not escape Peter Wadeck's attention. :)